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Army Sergeant Is Convicted of Sex Assaults

A United States military court today convicted a sergeant of sexually assaulting female subordinates at the Army's training center here and sentenced him to five years in prison.

The 25-year-old defendant, Sgt. First Class Paul Fuller of Columbus, Ohio, is the second noncommissioned officer at the Darmstadt base to be convicted of sex offenses as a result of a worldwide Army inquiry that grew out of the sex abuse scandal at the service's training center in Aberdeen, Md.

Sergeant Fuller was found guilty of one count of rape, three counts of forcible sodomy, three counts of cruelty and one count of kidnapping, crimes against five women in all. In addition to imposing the five-year prison term, the court ordered a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and benefits, and demotion to private.

At trial, the prosecution called Sergeant Fuller a ''predator'' who had exploited his rank for the sake of sexual gratification.

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But the defense argued that all the sex acts involved had been consensual and that race had played a major role in the decision to prosecute Sergeant Fuller, who is black. His lawyers described the defendant as a victim of a prejudiced investigation that had turned into a witch hunt by overzealous prosecutors.

After the verdict today, but before sentencing, the prosecution asked the court for a life prison term. But two of the women, both of whom had testified against Sergeant Fuller, told the court that he should be given only a short term, and one said she had not felt like a victim until investigators told her she was. Another woman, on the other hand, told the court that she would probably never recover from what Sergeant Fuller had done to her.